Because a recent discussion on this execrable list of "hot sci fi women" got me thinking about the few interesting female characters in a genre generally played to slobbering manchilds. Which brings me to my personal favorite female character in sci-fi:
Alia Atreides, St. Alia-of-the-Knife, "The Accursed One," "The female death spirit that walks without feet"
She can read your mind, she can kill you with her finger, she talked down the Emperor of the Galaxy, she murdered her own grandfather, she has excellent taste in hats. How's that for a role model kids of today can look up to? Every young girl should strive to be this bad ass by age 4. If they aren't by then, they probably never will.
Here she is going around the battlefield and finishing the dying or wounded, like any good fremen child:
Of course she grows up to be a royal bitch, and looks like a low-rent Elvish-American-princess in the tv-movie:
But we can forgive her for that, and try to remember how she was at her best: all potential. Older Alia isn't terribly interesting, mostly because between a certain age-range most female characters in sci fi fall into a small set of sexualized stereotypes. Hers being the overbearing and unstable unmarried figure just waiting for a strong man to come around and beat some sense into her. You have more luck at not being a flimsy male fantasy if you're under 16 or over 40.
